Rodgers Forge is a national historic district[2] southwest of the unincorporated Towson area and county seat of Baltimore County, Maryland, United States, just north of the Baltimore City/County line. It is mostly a residential area, with rowhouses, apartments, single-family dwellings, and a new complex of luxury townhomes. The area also has a small amount of commercial development. It is just south of Towson University. 21212 is the postal code for Rodgers Forge.
In 2004, Rodgers Forge gained international attention as the home of Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps.[3][4][5][6][7][8] In 2013, Rodgers Forge was ranked by Baltimore Magazine as one of the top neighborhoods in Baltimore County.[9] The magazine also named Rodgers Forge as one of the 10 "best-kept secret neighborhoods" in Baltimore metropolitan area for its "strong public schools, thriving community organizations, and easy access to shopping and entertainment in Baltimore and Towson."[10] Rodgers Forge has also been consistently ranked as one of the safest Baltimore neighborhoods, according to the website and online database NeighborhoodScout.[11] In 2019, Rodgers Forge became the first neighborhood group in Maryland to file to remove racist language from historic deeds.[12]
History
Most of the Rodgers Forge community geographic area, as stated in the Rodgers Forge Community Association, Inc. by-laws, was part of Dumbarton Farm, which as late as 1837 was owned by Johns Hopkins.[13] This Johns Hopkins died in August 1837,[14] while Johns Hopkins known as a benefactor to Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital was 42 years of age at the time of the older Johns Hopkins' death. There are some unfounded claims that link the Hopkins benefactor to Dumbarton Farm.[15] While other accounts do not specifically identify the Johns Hopkins.[16]
Rodgers Forge takes its name from the blacksmith shop of George Rodgers, built in 1800, that was once on the southeast corner of York Road and Stevenson Lane.[17]—the present day location of an automotive repair garage.[18] The blacksmith shop acquired an additional function as a U.S. post office, and thus the surrounding area became known as Rodgers Forge.[19] For example, in 1923, The Country Club of Maryland was founded as The Rodgers Forge Country Club.[20] The names Rodgers Forge Golf Club and Rodgers Forge Golf Course were also used interchangeably.
In 1934, builder James Keelty (Sr.)[21] began work on the Rodgers Forge neighborhood, and constructed over 600 red brick rowhouses until World War II stopped development.[17][22] After the war, work resumed under the direction of Keelty's two son's James Keelty Jr. and Joseph Keelty. 1,777 homes were completed by 1956. In 1939, the price of a new interior row home was five thousand dollars, with end-of-group homes selling for considerably more. Many of these homes were sold with deeds including covenants that prohibited Black people from living there—with one exception: "No person of any race other than the white race shall use or occupy any building or lot except domestic servants."[23]
The latter phase of construction saw the removal of a large hill just to the north of Dunkirk Road (through Murdock and Regester), flattening out to the north much of the original Dumbarton Farm down to subsoil, to accommodate the new row homes and apartments. The lack of topsoil - a frequent complaint of would-be gardeners in the neighborhood - is accounted for by the removal of the hill. During World War II, the neighborhood's "Victory Gardens" had occupied much of what now comprises Murdock Road, to the north of Dunkirk.
Despite the population density of Rodgers Forge, until the early 1960s, just to the west, a small working farm of a few acres with livestock remained at the junction of Stevenson Lane and Bellona Avenue. Just to the north in the same time period, the then operating Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad, affectionately known as the "Ma & Pa" (handling commuters in its last years on the Maryland section), crossed under Bellona at Armagh Village, the track bordering Stanmore Road to the north, as the line wended eastwards toward Towson, continuing across the future Osler Drive, approximately where the Shepherd Flag Station would have been located. From just south of the old Baltimore County Jail, the Ma & Pa made its way toward York, PA, crossing York Road by trestle, serving both the headquarters of Black & Decker and Bendix Radio on Joppa Road, the latter of which up to the 1960s had as many as 5,000 employees, a surprising number of whom lived in Rodgers Forge, as the development of Dulaney Valley to the north was yet to occur. North of Joppa - north of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church - there was virtually no development save farmland in the Loch Raven watershed, all the way to the Mason and Dixon Line, until Interstate 83 was officially completed in 1960. Also in the 1950s, from Bellona Avenue to Charles Street, a large tract of meadow had extended still, evolving to a retirement facility for a religious order of the Catholic Church in the 1960s, later sold for development.
During the '50s, kids were everywhere on bikes; summer nights of sweaty sleep were unbearable in baking-brick-oven row homes, since nobody had air conditioning in either car or home. In the stillness of the day's waning heat, an occasional Evening Bat, from the barn at the meadow on Charles Street, might flitter overhead. Chasing lightning bugs filled the evenings with delightful pastime and mosquitoes; during the days, yards filled with fragrant and colorful blooms were inundated with butterflies that had spent their caterpillar-lives gorging in nearby meadows, and there were abundant populations of bees and baby birds to watch and grasshoppers to catch. In 1953, if you were lucky enough to be a kid then, you witnessed with wonderment the unfolding of one of Nature's extraordinary and mysterious spectaculars - the emergence of Brood X cicadas: "The Great Eastern Brood" - true to its 17-year cyclical mandate. Some parents had been suspicious of the insects as possible vectors of poliomyelitis, finally conquered by the Salk vaccine, announced in March of that year. Admittedly, not everyone (certainly not most adults) enjoys millions of large flying insects clinging to everything in sight - only those with childhood memories of that certain place, at that certain point in time.
The postwar expansion of Rodgers Forge owed its genesis, demographics, and character in large part to the residency of a young, upwardly mobile, middle-class mix of blue collar and technical professionals and their burgeoning baby boom families. When the malls finally did come in the mid-1960s with explosive development, as Towson State Teachers College morphed into Towson State College, and St. Joseph Hospital and Greater Baltimore Medical Center consumed vast remaining tracts to the north, all relicts of surrounding rural life and artifacts of the railroad had vanished from Rodgers Forge by 1970.
In 2009, the entire neighborhood of Rodgers Forge was listed in National Register of Historic Places due to "its unique status as a well-preserved example of early to mid-20th Century community design and architecture."[24] According to the official citation:[25]
The Rodgers Forge Historic District is architecturally significant as a prototypical example of a type of suburban rowhouse development which characterized the region during the late 1920s through the mid-1950s, and is especially noteworthy for the quality of its planning, architecture, and construction... Rodgers Forge stands as the most architecturally accomplished of all of the Early American-style rowhouse neighborhoods built in the greater Baltimore area during these years.
Today, about 4,000 people live in Rodgers Forge,[17] which is now considered among the Baltimore area's "most sought after locations for families."[26]
Towson is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 55,197 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Baltimore County and the second-most populous unincorporated county seat in the United States.
Charles Village is a neighborhood located in the north-central area of Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It is a diverse, eclectic, international, largely middle-class area with many single-family homes that is in proximity to many of Baltimore's cultural amenities. Nearby are the Baltimore Museum of Art, The Homewood campus of The Johns Hopkins University, Olmstead's Wyman Park, and the weekly Waverly Farmers Market, and the arts district, Station North. Homes are exemplary Baltimore brick and stone row houses, many dating from the 1890s. Running from downtown north is the historic boulevard, Charles Street, where Baltimore's Easter Promenade once took place.
Ruxton and Riderwood are unincorporated communities in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. They are sometimes considered a part of Towson and are part of Towson's census area.
Mount Washington is an area of northwest Baltimore, Maryland. It is a designated city historic district and divided into two sections: South Road/Sulgrave to the southeast and Dixon's Hill to the north. The Mount Washington Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990 with a boundary increase in 2001, with five contributing buildings and four contributing structures.
Union Square is a neighborhood located in the Sowebo area of Baltimore. It dates to the 1830s and includes a historic district of houses and commerce buildings.
Charles Street, known for most of its route as Maryland Route 139, runs through Baltimore and the Towson area of Baltimore County. On the north end, it terminates at an intersection with Bellona Avenue near Interstate 695 (I-695). At the south end, it terminates in Federal Hill in Baltimore. Charles Street is one of the major routes through Baltimore, and is a major public transportation corridor. For the one-way portions of Charles Street, the street is functionally complemented by the parallel St. Paul Street, including St. Paul Place and Preston Gardens, Maryland Avenue, Cathedral Street, and Liberty Street.
Baltimore County Public Schools is the school district in charge of all public schools in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. It is the 25th largest school system in the US as of 2013. The school system is managed by the board of education, headquartered in Towson. Since July 1, 2023, the superintendent is Myriam Rogers.
Dumbarton Middle School is a school located at 300 Dumbarton Road in the Rodgers Forge neighborhood of Towson, Maryland, United States, just outside Baltimore. It is part of the Baltimore County Public Schools system.
Maryland Route 134 is a signed state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known as Bellona Avenue, the state highway runs 1.63 miles (2.62 km) from MD 139 in Towson north to Ruxton Road in Ruxton in central Baltimore County. MD 134 was created as a modern road from MD 139 northwest to MD 25 in 1928. The highway was reduced to its present length in 1962.
Route 51 is a bus route operated by the Maryland Transit Administration in Baltimore and its suburbs. The line currently runs from the center of Towson to the Inner Harbor in Downtown Baltimore, serving the Charles Street corridor. Route 51 replaced Route 11 on June 18, 2017 due to the BaltimoreLink bus system overhaul.
Clifton Park is a public urban park and national historic district located between the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello and Waverly neighborhoods to the west and the Belair-Edison, Lauraville, Hamilton communities to the north in the northeast section of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It is roughly bordered by Erdman Avenue to the northeast, Sinclair Lane to the south, Harford Road to the northwest and Belair Road to the southeast. The eighteen-hole Clifton Park Golf Course, which is the site of the annual Clifton Park Golf Tournament, occupies the north side of the park.
Medfield is a neighborhood located in north Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America. It is located to the north of the trendy Hampden neighborhood and south of affluent Roland Park neighborhood. Its unofficial boundaries are Coldspring Lane to the north; Jones Falls Expressway to the west; Falls Road/Hickory Avenue to the east; and West 41st Street to the south.
Lake Roland is a 100-acre (0.40 km2) defunct reservoir in Baltimore County, Maryland. It was named for Roland Run, a nearby stream that feeds the lake and eventually flows into Jones Falls. It runs southeast through the city center to the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River and the Baltimore Harbor. It is located just north of the Baltimore city limits.
Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census, it is the 30th-most populous city in the United States. Baltimore was designated an independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851, and is currently the most populous independent city in the nation. As of the 2020 census, the population of the Baltimore metropolitan area was 2,838,327, the 20th-largest metropolitan area in the country. When combined with the larger Washington metropolitan area, the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area (CSA) has a 2020 U.S. census population of 9,973,383, the third-largest in the country.
Frankford is a neighborhood in northeast Baltimore. Frankford is the most populous of the city's designated neighborhoods, with over 17,000 residents.
Bellona–Gittings is a neighborhood in the North District of Baltimore, located between the neighborhoods of Cedarcroft (east) and The Orchards (west). Its boundaries are marked by the Baltimore County line (north), East Melrose Avenue (south), Bellona Avenue (east) and North Charles Street (west). Many of the houses in this neighborhood were built from 1853 to 1956, with a wide variety of styles. Aside from one historic commercial building, the neighborhood is residential.
The history of Czechs in Baltimore dates back to the mid-19th century. Thousands of Czechs immigrated to East Baltimore during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, becoming an important component of Baltimore's ethnic and cultural heritage. The Czech community has founded a number of cultural institutions to preserve the city's Czech heritage, including a Roman Catholic church, a heritage association, a gymnastics association, an annual festival, a language school, and a cemetery. During the height of the Czech community in the late 19th century and early 20th century, Baltimore was home to 12,000 to 15,000 people of Czech birth or heritage. The population began to decline during the mid-to-late 20th century, as the community assimilated and aged, while many Czech Americans moved to the suburbs of Baltimore. By the 1980s and early 1990s, the former Czech community in East Baltimore had been almost entirely dispersed, though a few remnants of the city's Czech cultural legacy still remain.
Stoneleigh-Rodgers Forge was a Census-designated place in Baltimore County during the 1960 United States Census, which consists of the communities of Stoneleigh and Rodgers Forge. The population in 1960 was 15,645. The census area merged with Towson in 1970, when the population of Towson CDP increased from 19,090 to 77,768. The ZIP code serving the area is 21212.
Better Waverly is a neighborhood in the North District of Baltimore, located between the neighborhoods of Charles Village (west) and Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello (east). Its boundaries are marked by East 33rd Street (north), Exeter Hall Avenue (south), Greenmount Avenue (west) and Loch Raven Road (east).
Towson Run is a tributary of Jones Falls, a stream in Baltimore County, Maryland, in the United States. The stream runs north through Sheppard Pratt and Towson University, near the communities of Rodgers Forge and Armagh Village.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
